


Kindness

by acerbitas



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Abuse, Everything hurts a little less, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Mentions of Ramsay and torture, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-11
Updated: 2013-09-11
Packaged: 2017-12-26 06:42:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/962813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acerbitas/pseuds/acerbitas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In preparation for a feast with distinguished guests, Roose tells Ramsay to make Theon more presentable.  A sullen Ramsay passes this task onto his wife.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Kindness

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much to amethyst_ink for looking over this story and encouraging me to write it. The funniest error she caught was "scallop" instead of "scalp." :)

Theon shivered.  The air was crisp, and as sharp as Ramsay’s eyes had been just a few minutes before.  He ran his aching fingers back and forth over his arm.  He knew he should be frightened, drooling in terror, really, about what sort of reminder Ramsay would devise for him after this.  Ramsay was creative.  Ramsay was smart.  He would think of something good to remind his Reek of who he was.

Reek knew already.  The shame was burned into his heart, a scar that would never fade or stop aching.  He knew he was nothing.  He knew he was a dog, a creature.  He knew he stank to the point nobody approached him, not that they would, anyway.  No, no matter what Jeyne did to improve on his appearance, he would remain Reek.  But his Lord told him he needed reminders, and after this, he knew he would get one.  He should be afraid, he thought.  But he felt nothing but cold.  Cold that froze him to the core of his underfed being.

Theon clutched his arm, and looked at Jeyne warily.  It was not her fault that she’d been assigned to cut and clean his hair, he knew.  He knew she had as much choice as he did, which was none.  Roose Bolton had told his son that if he was going to drag “that wretched man” around at the upcoming feast, he would have to do something, anything, about his appearance.  It would not do to display him like that in front of such a distinguished crowd.

Theon had been speechless with terror, and even if he had thought of something to say, it was best for him to keep silent.  His normal protestations of “this is how I should be, my Lord,” and “no thank you, my Lord,” when Lord Ramsay asked him, warningly, if he wanted a bath, were useless in the face of his Lord’s father.  What the man wanted, he got, no matter how sullen and vile Ramsay’s face became.  Theon felt his jaw begin to tremble.

Jeyne looked back at him, and smiled a thin, wane smile.  “I’m sorry, Theon,” she said.  She moved her hand towards his hair.  Her movement was slow, careful, like she was reaching out to touch an injured animal.  Still, he flinched beneath her touch. Her fingers ran over bald patches, knots, and grease.

Ramsay had told her, dourly, to wash and cut Reek’s hair when he had realized he could not get out of Roose’s demands.  She should not apologize to Reek; she only had to do what Ramsay said.  She had to make him happy.  There wasn’t anything else to do.  “Do not apologize to me,” he managed.  “Please.  You have to do what he says.”

She shook her head, though at what, he wasn’t sure, and then turned to fetch the water bucket she had left outside the door.  Jeyne had dropped weight since she’d first fallen into Ramsay’s net.  Her thin elbows jutted from her arms like a broken bow, and she struggled to bring the bucket over to where he was seated on the floor.  She knelt next to him, and instinctively, he turned his head away.

“Theon,” she said, softly.

“He might come back anytime,” he whispered, “he might be listening right now.”  It made a mad sort of sense to Reek.  It made sense that Ramsay could listen even when he wasn’t present.  Ramsay controlled the world.

“What do you mean?” she asked, but he saw how her hands trembled as she pushed a rag into the water, swirling it around.  Then she added much needed soap, coaxing it to mingle with the water.

“My name is Reek,” he told her.  He believed it; he did.  Theon was an angry whisper.  Theon was a ghost that suggested Reek do dangerous things, scary things.  Theon got Reek hurt.  Reek did not like Theon.

Jeyne did not say anything to that, but pulled the now dripping cloth from the bucket, and squeezed it out.  When she moved it towards his head, he flinched.  “Maybe it will be nice to have clean hair,” she suggested.  It was obvious she was trying to be soothing; Reek did not know why she wanted to comfort him.

Mysterious tears welled up in his eyes, and he rubbed his grimy sleeve on his face, ashamed.  But he bowed his head, consenting to let her begin.

“It will grow out again,” Jeyne suggested.  “it will get greasy.”  She was at a loss as to how to make him feel better.  She pushed the cloth onto his head, and began to rub it into his scalp.

Theon wanted to say that Ramsay was going to hurt him for this, and that he was scared.  But he clung to the last shards of his dignity, because he felt more pathetic around Jeyne than he did anyone else.  Jeyne was kind to him for no good reason.  If Theon had any manhood at all he would have done something to help her.

Soon his head was thoroughly wet.  He kept his eyes fixed on the stone floor, watching the water drip from his hair onto the floor.  Hair fell with it, really, too much hair.  It settled on the floor, gray, miserable and limp.

Memories rose up, unbidden, of Theon getting his hair cut along with Robb.  Theon and Robb.  Reek had not known Robb, and he resented having Theon’s traitorous, aching memories.  He shut his eyes tight, as if that would make the thought vanish from his mind.  But it only made Robb’s face grow more distinct.  He cringed.

Jeyne’s fingers and the rag left his head.  “I’m going to comb it,” she said.  “I’m sorry, but it is going to hurt.  You just have so many knots.”

Theon felt an angry laugh bubble in his chest, but it died before it reached his lips.  The pain he had endured under Ramsay’s knife made the pain of knotted hair, no matter how stubborn and ancient, seem childish.  He was glad he had not laughed, because Jeyne was sincere.  A jolt of agony and shame hit him again.  She did not want to hurt him, even though he deserved it.  He nodded, any words lost to him.

Every time Jeyne took a new piece of his hair in her hands she held it so that he would not feel the brush tugging as hard against his scalp.  The tenderness of her touch was so foreign that he could not repress a sob.  Jeyne put her hand on his head, and her fingers moved through his hair delicately.

Putting a hand over his face, Theon felt another sob wrack him, undesired and unbidden.  Then another.  He could not help it, even though he fought it with every last bit of courage he could muster _.  I’m crying in front of a woman_ , he thought.  _A woman who is cutting my hair like I’m a child._   The man moved his other hand to his face, and curled in on himself.  He was a skeletal ball of rags and tears.

Jeyne was silent, probably for a lack of anything to say, but moved her hand through his hair several times.  Then she continued her work.  The process was unpleasant, and seemed to take ages.  When Theon managed to open his eyes and glance around, he saw more hair littering the ground.  He wondered that he had any hair left at all.

Finally, she finished that task, and put the brush on the floor.  Belatedly Theon realized that she had used her own brush on his hair.  She really shouldn’t have.  His hair was disgusting.  He was disgusting.

“I see a little bit of brown in here,” she told him, hands moving through his thin, patchy locks.  She sounded surprised.

Reek had only seen gray when the matted mess fell unwelcome into his eyes.  He was not sure how to feel about that.  It was another whisper from Theon.  Unwelcome, unbidden.  “Oh,” he said, dumbly.

“I need your knife to cut it,” she told him.  “I don’t have anything else.”

Theon didn’t like the idea of anyone having a knife in their hands so close to him.  The wounds from Ramsay’s flaying knife burned with a heavy reminder.  He shuddered, and if he had anything in his stomach, he was sure it would have made an unpleasant reappearance.  Logically, he knew, that Jeyne would not hurt him.  But his heart burst in agony at any reminder of Ramsay’s torture.  It was as painful and nonsensical as if he was chewing on rocks with his broken teeth.

“Yes,” he said, voice hoarse.  “Of course.”  His pulse quickened as he reached to his side and handed it to her.  It did not matter that he knew Jeyne was good and kind.  His heart and brain often conspired against him to bring about a terrible helpless feeling.  The feeling of being dragged down to Hell, back to Ramsay and the cross all over again.  He pulled his knees against his chest, a thin protection.

Jeyne unexpectedly put the knife on the floor, and shifted farther away from him.  Farther.  A safe distance.  He was baffled, to the point he looked up and into her face.

“You looked afraid.”

He was ashamed and even more baffled, because he was afraid nearly all the time, and nobody cared.  “It doesn’t matter,” he said.

“Yes it does,” she responded.  “At least, it does to me.”

For some reason that made Theon feel despairing instead of encouraged, but he did not know why.  Maybe it was because he was undeserving, or maybe it was because her pity could not save either of them.  In a perverse way he was used to hurt.  It made more sense in his world.  If she was just a little mean, he thought, this would all be more bearable.

Out loud, he let out a shaky breath, and said: “My Lady is too kind.”  He pushed the knife towards her, a silent signal that it was okay to begin.  Feeling curious, he put his hand up to his hair.  It was still wet, but no longer greasy or matted.

Jeyne sidled back to his side, and cautiously took up the knife again.  Theon watched her, and watched it, but did not get dragged down, back into old terrors.  Again she held his hair in her fingers in such a way as to not hurt him.

“I am no expert,” she admitted.  “I’m afraid this is going to be rough.”

“I don’t mind.”  He did not.  Reek’s hair fell around him, forming an uneven circle.  He shuddered because it was unnatural for Reek’s hair to be cut like a person’s.  Reek was a pet and pet’s hair should be left as it is.

When she was done, she lay the knife next to him and fluffed his hair.  The air had dried it halfway, and it was puffing up now.  Some of his bald patches were covered by this blessing.  “You do look better,” she told him.  “Would you let me wash your face?”

“No…no please…” he whispered, as if Ramsay Bolton had found a way to infuse himself into the very walls of the castle.

“I’m sorry,” she said.  “I just wanted to take the opportunity when I could.”

 “I am supposed to be dirty,” he told her, pleadingly.  He wanted to ask why she was so nice to him.  She should not be.  It would in fact be safer for her not to be.

“Nobody is supposed to be dirty,” she said, and in her thin voice he heard a wisp of defiance.

Reek considered this for at least a minute.  “I am nobody,” he finally responded.  Then, without meaning to, he blurted out:  “You should not be kind to me.”  In his mind two tiny, charred bodies swung in the wind.  Theon’s memories again, clear as a summer morning.  Reek could never get rid of them.

First Jeyne reached her hand out to touch his shoulder, but he jumped, and she withdrew.  “There is enough cruelty in this place,” she told him, and her voice was choked with sorrow.  Around her lips were the memories of Ramsay’s fist.

Theon clenched his eyes shut, remembering her wedding night and all that had come with it.  Reek had done horrible things, he thought, miserably.  Reek the dog.  He shook his head, tears falling yet again.  At least this time she was crying with him.  That made the shame more bearable, but at the same time she cried so much.  He did not want her to cry anymore.

She moved until she was in front of him, and put her hands gently on his legs, which were curled up against his chest. “Theon,” she said.

Reek shook his head.

“Theon,” she repeated.  Each time she said it, it was like she was looking for a lost child in the woods.  But she said it so softly, it was barely audible.

Reek could not respond.  He wanted to say “Jeyne,” in response, but found he could not.  Instead he moved his wounded fingers down to hers, and held her hands against his legs.  It was an awkward position, and a strange touch.  But he did not want her to go away, not yet, so he cupped her hands in his own.  Even if he didn’t deserve it, he wanted her to stay.  Jeyne smiled at him through her tears.  Theon clutched her hands harder, even though it hurt his fingers.  She did not pull away.

Eventually, Ramsay Bolton would grow bored, and seek out his pet or his wife for a game.  Inevitably, Ramsay Bolton would hurt them both.   Again, and yet again.  But a small piece of warmth huddled in Theon’s heart, now. He latched onto it like a lifeline.


End file.
